Once when I was a kid, too young to have any sense, I wanted to make some money shovelling snow. I didn't realize yet that you need to make an sgreement with your customer before doing the work. This was a small town in upstate new york so even the strangers were not really strangers. As a kid you don't really see any adult as being all that different from your parents or teachers.

So dippy me just starts shovelling the sidewalk in front of one of the shops on main street, a good chunk of storefront between the shop and the street that hadn't been done when the others had been.

It took a good hour or more, and I cleaned it all up good, no haphazard slack job. Then the owner comes out when it's all done and gives me 2 quarters. This is about '77 to '79, that's 1978 to be clear not 1878...

I go home and my dad asks how I did and I tell him, and he said first, you should have asked if he wanted his sidewalk shovelled first, and agreed on a price before doing it, so in that sense you can't complain because you did that to yourself. However seperately, you should have given him the 50 cents back and said no thank you sir. if this is all you can spare, then you obviously must need it more than me. And refuse to take the 50 cents and even refuse to take anything even if he then offers more. You were wrong to just start doing something without being told to, but he should be ashamed to do that.

That is what's wrong with a $5 gift. Or an uttery thoughtless gift. Keep it. You obviously need it more than me.

It's more about dignity and respect and thoughtfullness than plain money, but a tiny token money value with no other aspect to make it more about being funny or something, is itself a message.

I don't think it's the same situation. Not accepting 50 cents for shoveling establishes the price for this work - i.e. creates situation where there's "paid work" - which costs more than $0.50 and "free/charity work" which costs nothing. With gifts, it's neither - you don't work for gifts, you work for the salary. The gifts are extra - unless there's something in the contract, or they are culturally expected - e.g. in Israel, it is customary for every company of decent size to give out gifts on certain holidays, and if it's not done, it's considered a cultural faux pas. Shitty gift could in this situation be considered as trying to change the cultural norm and thus one could push back by refusing them, for example - thus signaling that the cultural duty of gift-giving remains un-fullfilled. But in the US, I don't think there's any cultural custom like that?

> It's more about dignity and respect and thoughtfullness

I guess I just don't think people giving me money for free is an affront to my dignity. In fact, I am willing to accept monetary donations of any size (well, maybe above $1, otherwise it's too much trouble to bother) - as long as they are not accompanied with any reciprocal expectation from me. As I said, if there are expectation or cultural norm, that's different business.

50 cents' origin story.

The dad solution is to be passive aggressive and trying to humiliate store owner who did not had interest in you shoveling his place regularly?

Did you miss the part where we're talking about a 7 or 8 year old dipshit kid and an adult?

That store owner absolutely deserved to be humiliated. It doesn't matter the tiniest little bit about the kid didn't make an agreement first. I suppose you will now call the unsolicited shovelling vandalism and the store owner actually should have called the cops?

Do you not have any sense of perspective or context?

Maybe I'm overly sensitive but I get mad whenever I see or hear the water bottle thing. I hate these water bottles and I sure as hell won't carry one with me. And in the office it's the worst. If everyone had the same one how would I not accidentally mix them up? Also who needs more than a low amount of water bottles.

You could imagine I'd be against drinking tap water, no - I've been doing that for years. But I am against lugging bespoke branded water bottles around and I can not get over the fact how people would assume they're even a decent gift.

Some of these end up in the Goodwill stores of Silicon Valley. Someone should visit them all, and make a blog: "Coffee cups and water bottles from failed startups."

> like gift card for a place I don't go to

When I first moved to the US I wasn't particularly flush with cash and had maybe a 1000 bucks in my pocket by the end of the first year. At some point I worked a Saturday and my manager gave me a $50 gift card to Ruth's Chris as a thank you. So I went with a friend only to come to the conclusion the cheapest steak on the menu was $60 to begin with, oh the shock I felt.

The gifts that really get me going are the 500 mAh power banks that probably cost all of $2, tiny terrible speakers were a thing for a while too. They'll end up in a drawer or the landfill.

It's as the article says, a pittance. If you go above and beyond by some amount, you want to see that rewarded proportionally. Yeah, it's > $0 … but was it commensurate with the effort?

I remember a manager once giving me $100 to "have a nice dinner with my spouse" after working over the weekend. It was a nice gesture. Showed awareness of the sacrifice, even if it was expected.

Not full retribution, but we were all chasing the startup dream, or perhaps a bigger bonus later. There's some value in small short-term rewards, to show appreciation.

That's a 20× difference though. $5 barely buys the coffee that one probably had to drink to work the late hours/weekend or whatever, let alone would it make up for the time. (And, again, $100 might be enough, or it might not. Depends on the effort the person put up. If I had to spend all weekend on something … probably not, since my own employer pays me at a higher rate than that; i.e., I sacrificed a weekend for lower wage?)